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08-28-2014, 04:23 PM   #1
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Accent, important to you?

I'm a bit of a linguistic conesuier.

The coastal lowlands SC accent is oh so overwhelming to me.
Next is Alabama and Mississippi.
Not Georgia at all.

I live in NC and consider myself from TN (in an unusual turn of fate I consider that
accent to be very objectionable and I worked for years to erase it. They dipthong
the wrong vowels).

I'm trying to make sure my daughter has the right accent.

This is not a flame thread. It's an honest question.

I want my daughter to have a clear very southern accent, but from a very specific part of the south.
I'm so happy she already has the O-R right.

Any takers on this?

08-28-2014, 04:26 PM   #2
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yous all southerners sond strange to me. It amazes me how many accents there are in America, there is not much variation in Australia. I have visited a few countries and I picked up the accent a bit with some words unintentionally, I think it helps you to be understood.

Last edited by gmans; 08-28-2014 at 04:33 PM.
08-28-2014, 04:35 PM   #3
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Original Poster
LMAO
I could not understand my wifes relatives.
But this is a non issue to my post.
I DO appreciate your humor

But I am actually serious.

I want my daughter to have an accent that is considered not plain.

---------- Post added 08-28-14 at 07:38 PM ----------

I did not realilze you are from Austrailia lol

There is maybe 20 main accents here.

I want my daughter to have one of maybe three of them.

(of course I want her to also speak spanish and russian as well)

---------- Post added 08-28-14 at 07:54 PM ----------

BTW that hollywood gone with the wind crap is insulting.

---------- Post added 08-28-14 at 08:14 PM ----------

My cousin who is female just confirmed it.
08-28-2014, 08:48 PM   #4
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I don't, in general, have difficulties with different *accents* here: it's just that some people just can't or won't enunciate it they're ...failing to enunciate enough. (Around here if you can't understand someone the first time, they usually just repeat things the exact same way, not very helpful. You wanna be like, 'Try slowing it down, take a stab at the Queen's English, do an impression, even. "

My Bostonian can get pretty heavy, but if it's ever giving someone a hard time, I can modulate it or try for TV announcer English, etc. (I did try filing off the Southie, etc, as a teen, but it seems to have sprung back.) I think as long as she can do some of that your daughter will have an OK time with whatever.

See, around here the college kids'd be like, 'Do the accent!' every time a Boondock Saints movie came out. Here's me being exotic.

08-28-2014, 08:59 PM   #5
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Everyone has an accent...except Jimmy Carter.

I answer a lot of phone calls daily. Those people from the US south really twang the nasal passages and I often have to ask them to repeat what they say :-)
08-28-2014, 09:12 PM   #6
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Preferring an accent is just elitism. What's important is speaking eloquently and intelligently.
08-28-2014, 09:30 PM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by condor27596 Quote
I'm a bit of a linguistic conesuier.

The coastal lowlands SC accent is oh so overwhelming to me.
Next is Alabama and Mississippi.
Not Georgia at all.

I live in NC and consider myself from TN (in an unusual turn of fate I consider that
accent to be very objectionable and I worked for years to erase it. They dipthong
the wrong vowels).

I'm trying to make sure my daughter has the right accent.

This is not a flame thread. It's an honest question.

I want my daughter to have a clear very southern accent, but from a very specific part of the south.
I'm so happy she already has the O-R right.

Any takers on this?
Well, in some ways I can sympathize because I have lived half my life down South and I've seen the effect that having even a bit of a Southern drawl can have on people in other places when I go to live there. People from other places do sometimes equate having certain accents with being a hick. There is no denying that. I'm lucky in a sense in that I can turn it on or off as I please. When I am down here I do sound more Southern than I do when I live elsewhere. Give me a month in any given place and I will unconsciously adapt to that, and people will be thinking I am from there. I have had people think I was from NYC when I lived there. From California when I lived there. People here often think I was born and raised which I was not. I didn't set foot in this state until I was nearly 12. If I go back to where I actually was raised for most of my early childhood people there think I've never left it all my life.

Your child will likely live in more than one place in her life. She'll pick up some accent from the places she goes, or she might even learn to speak with absolutely none when it suits her. All you can really do is teach her to speak correctly and leave the accent thing to fate. Some people they grow up and you can tell in every syllable where they are from, but my experience is the more people move around, and these days people move around a LOT, the more neutral their accent can get. How she sounds now may have little to nothing to do with how she will sound as an adult after a year or two in a different place.

I can sound as Southern as you might ever wish, in person, if I want to. But on the phone? I seldom do. In business I've learned that "neutral" just works better. Likely she'll learn to speak both ways. Most kids do. My nieces are very Southern and sometimes you can tell, but not always. Even now they are unconsciously picking up that using a neutral accent can benefit them and I've heard them doing the same thing, adapting their speech accordingly...

08-28-2014, 09:37 PM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by condor27596 Quote
BTW that hollywood gone with the wind crap is insulting.
Yes some of the tv and movie accents are insult to the ears and the people that have the real accent. Some aussie actors have butchered the accents, but some you hard pressed to tell.

Sorry to take your thread off topic prior and it was meant to fun.

My children are mostly grown up, I think if they have good health and are moral people, I can live with any other thing they do to express themselves, as in tattoos and body piercings or speech patterns etc.
08-29-2014, 09:46 PM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by gmans Quote
Yes some of the tv and movie accents are insult to the ears and the people that have the real accent. Some aussie actors have butchered the accents, but some you hard pressed to tell.

Sorry to take your thread off topic prior and it was meant to fun.

My children are mostly grown up, I think if they have good health and are moral people, I can live with any other thing they do to express themselves, as in tattoos and body piercings or speech patterns etc.
Eh, I don't think you did anything wrong. As for "Gone With The Wind" some of that may be less about authenticity than time. Especially in TV and radio, women were really expected to sound pretty melodious whatever the accent, and even those changed. Being from the Northeast I might have a Boston accent, but I don't sound like the old-time radio and movie voices from there, either: I tend to talk like my grandparents and aunts and uncles and parents talked when *I* was a kid, which was decades later. (They changed, too.)
08-29-2014, 10:49 PM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by Ratmagiclady Quote
Eh, I don't think you did anything wrong. As for "Gone With The Wind" some of that may be less about authenticity than time. Especially in TV and radio, women were really expected to sound pretty melodious whatever the accent, and even those changed. Being from the Northeast I might have a Boston accent, but I don't sound like the old-time radio and movie voices from there, either: I tend to talk like my grandparents and aunts and uncles and parents talked when *I* was a kid, which was decades later. (They changed, too.)
To be honest, i have not seen no more than 5 minutes of "Gone with the wind" it was locked away for so long in Australia that it was almost impossible to see, it was eventually released on VHS or DVD but never did see it. Is it any good?
08-30-2014, 02:46 AM   #11
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Being from the Philly area, I've lived up and down the east coast from the hills of NC (Murphy area) to where I am now up in New England, and I can honestly say the two toughest accents to understand are the Southend Boston and the Downeast Mainer accents. The southern drawl has *nothing* on the "Say what?" factor involved with those two.

As far as I know, you won't be able to do much about her accent - as soon as she hits elementary school and starts associating with other children she's going t pick up whatever accent the other kids have.

Your only choice really is to move somewhere where people speak how you want them to.
08-30-2014, 06:04 AM   #12
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I've lived all along the east coast and I probably very little accent that would distinguish me from any geographical area. I grew up in Florida and had a bit of a central Fla. accent in my youth but it has mixed through the years as I have lived in New Jersey, both southern and northern Jersey where the accents are completely different and then northern NY where lifelong locals sound an awful lot like non French speaking people from Canada with a little New England mixed in. I don't think accents are really important and I would never concern myself at all as to whether my kids spoke in any type of accent. Since most people in this country today rarely spend their lives in the same place, accents are becoming a rare and quaint thing. I live close to the Vermont border and am in New England all the time and I rarely hear that "New England" accent from anybody that doesn't have gray hair.
08-30-2014, 07:19 AM   #13
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How are you going to control your daughter's accent?

More important than accent , I think, is to encourage her, and get her in a situation to learn and use correct grammar,
and to know when not to use colloquialism.

I am a citizen now so I suppose I can say, while I don't mind any of the localized accents,
some common American English is grating
Ones like "acrossed" "just saying" "freaking" "seen", 'done" etc

Since I left Australia 20 years ago, there has evolved a strange Australian way
of using negatives and positives together.
"Yes.., no, Mate, Yes, she's no good here at all. That Prime minister, yes,..no, he's got to go!"

I have not noticed that on the British or Canadian sides, but
I hear that arising occasionally here in USA recently, I heard it on the Diane Rhhheeeeem show this week.

I don't like the way USA politicians apparently "dumb down" their speeches from their natural speech.
Even the previous and current Presidents seemed to do that.

The ones I butcher in speech are to use of "I" and "me" etc.
And I am the heaviest contributor to the swearing jar here, to the delight on my sons.

I think the advent of text messenging in all its forms, is making it more difficult for the young ones to speak correctly.
08-30-2014, 08:03 AM   #14
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I agree with you, Wombat. Learning to speak correctly and even more importantly, learning to write correctly are very important. This isn't taught to same extent is was when our generation went to school and is extremely important when trying to get jobs. I suspect much of the difficulty the younger generation has in finding work is a result of poor use of the English language and equally poor writing skills. That sweet southern accent goes over fine when coming from the waitress in the diner but could be hindrance in finding employment in other parts of the country, especially if that local accent is loaded with poor grammar. At the very least, learn to speak intelligently when you need to.
08-31-2014, 10:15 AM - 3 Likes   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by condor27596 Quote
...conesuier...Any takers on this?
She might get more mileage out of being a good speller.

Last edited by lammie200; 10-04-2014 at 09:19 AM.
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